Now, as the proposition "I think" (in the problematical sense)contains the form of every judgement in general and is the constant accompaniment of all the categories, it is manifest that conclusions are drawn from it only by a transcendental employment of the understanding.This use of the understanding excludes all empirical elements; and we cannot, as has been shown above, have any favourable conception beforehand of its procedure.We shall therefore follow with a critical eye this proposition through all the predicaments of pure psychology; but we shall, for brevity's sake, allow this examination to proceed in an uninterrupted connection.
Before entering on this task, however, the following general remark may help to quicken our attention to this mode of argument.
It is not merely through my thinking that I cognize an object, but only through my determining a given intuition in relation to the unity of consciousness in which all thinking consists.It follows that Icognize myself, not through my being conscious of myself as thinking, but only when I am conscious of the intuition of myself as determined in relation to the function of thought.All the modi of self-consciousness in thought are hence not conceptions of objects (conceptions of the understanding- categories); they are mere logical functions, which do not present to thought an object to be cognized, and cannot therefore present my Self as an object.Not the consciousness of the determining, but only that of the determinable self, that is, of my internal intuition (in so far as the manifold contained in it can be connected conformably with the general condition of the unity of apperception in thought), is the object.
1.In all judgements I am the determining subject of that relation which constitutes a judgement.But that the I which thinks, must be considered as in thought always a subject, and as a thing which cannot be a predicate to thought, is an apodeictic and identical proposition.
But this proposition does not signify that I, as an object, am, for myself, a self-subsistent being or substance.This latter statement-an ambitious one- requires to be supported by data which are not to be discovered in thought; and are perhaps (in so far as I consider the thinking self merely as such) not to be discovered in the thinking self at all.
2.That the I or Ego of apperception, and consequently in all thought, is singular or simple, an;3 cannot be resolved into a plurality of subjects, and therefore indicates a logically simple subject- this is self-evident from the very conception of an Ego, and is consequently an analytical proposition.But this is not tantamount to declaring that the thinking Ego is a simple substance-for this would be a synthetical proposition.The conception of substance always relates to intuitions, which with me cannot be other than sensuous, and which consequently lie completely out of the sphere of the understanding and its thought: but to this sphere belongs the affirmation that the Ego is simple in thought.It would indeed be surprising, if the conception of "substance," which in other cases requires so much labour to distinguish from the other elements presented by intuition- so much trouble, too, to discover whether it can be simple (as in the case of the parts of matter)- should be presented immediately to me, as if by revelation, in the poorest mental representation of all.
3.The proposition of the identity of my Self amidst all the manifold representations of which I am conscious, is likewise a proposition lying in the conceptions themselves, and is consequently analytical.But this identity of the subject, of which I am conscious in all its representations, does not relate to or concern the intuition of the subject, by which it is given as an object.
This proposition cannot therefore enounce the identity of the person, by which is understood the consciousness of the identity of its own substance as a thinking being in all change and variation of circumstances.To prove this, we should require not a mere analysis of the proposition, but synthetical judgements based upon a given intuition.
4.I distinguish my own existence, as that of a thinking being, from that of other things external to me- among which my body also is reckoned.This is also an analytical proposition, for other things are exactly those which I think as different or distinguished from myself.
But whether this consciousness of myself is possible without things external to me; and whether therefore I can exist merely as a thinking being (without being man)- cannot be known or inferred from this proposition.
Thus we have gained nothing as regards the cognition of myself as object, by the analysis of the consciousness of my Self in thought.
The logical exposition of thought in general is mistaken for a metaphysical determination of the object.
